


Cognitive Dissonance

by Loudest_Voice



Series: The Legend of God's Eyes [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Jealousy, Mission Fic, Obito POV, Sequel, Stalking, immature humor, insane troll logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:45:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loudest_Voice/pseuds/Loudest_Voice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obito will kill Kakashi when the time is right, and not a moment sooner. The bastard hasn't suffered enough yet, first of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [this story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6308026/chapters/14453944). It answers the riveting question "but what about Kakashi?"
> 
> Also, thanks to Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta-reading again! She makes writing this way more fun.

“Fuck, what is your obsession with Hatake Kakashi?” Deidara asks, then completely fails to read the change in Tobi’s mood. “You’re like . . . _in love_ with him, or something?”

Tobi’s gone intangible, slipping into Deidara’s personal space and grabbing him by the throat with his inhuman arm before he thinks ‘hey, this isn’t something some dumbass underling could do’.

“Oops,” he giggles, letting go of Deidara’s neck and taking the defensive kick. “Don’t push a guy’s buttons like that,” Tobi adds from the ground, injecting his voice with a healthy dose of pain.

“You’re so annoying, hn,” says Deidara. “I’ll blow you up the instant Leader says we don’t need you anymore.”

He leaves Tobi on the forest floor, some fifty miles from Konoha, wondering just what he’s said, or how much and how often, that’s made someone as self-centered (and quite frankly, dumb) as Deidara work out that his interest in Sharingan Kakashi is anything more than professional. The smarter Akatsuki members, like Hoshigaki and Konan, must have definitely worked out that Tobi’s got some personal history with Kakashi.

Oh well. Whatever. Kakashi’s so famous that it’s probably easier to find random ninja who don’t want to kill him, or fuck him, or just meet him and bask in his glory.

He fades into Kamui’s dimension and slips past Konoha’s Hyuuga sentries, then disguises himself as any random villager. Perhaps an ex-ninja crippled during one of the Secret Wars, or any random mission. Even half-scarred and with a missing eye, Tobi manages not to attract attention to himself. It shouldn’t be so simple to perch near the Memorial and wait for Kakashi to show up and divulge Konoha’s secrets, but Kakashi’s lost his mind as bad as Tobi has.

“I hate being trapped in the middle of all this dumbass politics,” Kakashi tells the Stone, sighing. “Those assholes want to kill Neji, but not outright, and the Council wants to posture and protect him, but also not outright, so hey, send him on an S-rank with that neurotic asshole, Hatake. The kid’ll die anyway, but message sent. Not with our blessing.”

Tobi has many questions, but first and foremost, who the fuck is Neji?

He can only stay hidden in Kamui for so long, and Kakashi would notice him spying at the Memorial right away, so he has to leave before Kakashi helpfully babbles about ‘Neji’ more specifically. At an inn by one of the outposts near Konoha, he peruses the bingo books for a Neji and comes up with nothing. He deduces he must be a Leaf ninja, or just some rich Konoha merchant or some shit, and sneaks back into the village.

It’s too risky to show up at shinobi hangout spots in case there are too many Hyuuga nearby, so he makes straight for one of the seedier bars in the Red Lights District, disguised as a paunchy middle-aged businessman with a voyeuristic streak, and soaks in the gossip. And the stink of sweat, urine, and fuck knows what else steaming off the grimy floor. When any whore dares to come his way, Tobi flashes enough genjutsu to scare them into a bathroom for a good cry. He hates, _hates it_ , when anyone touches him.

There’s nothing civilians love more than talking shit about shinobi, so he waits until a pair of drunks starts complaining about the paperwork they have to do to keep their genin rank.

“Yeah,” says Tobi once he’s sure the interruption will sound natural. “That Neji’s a real asshole.”

“Who the fuck is Neji?”

Alright, that’s not productive.

Tobi abandons that plan and stalks the Memorial Stone some more. Kakashi shows up as the sun peeks over the horizon, with Tobi a minute away from retreating to any forest hole where it would be safe to summon White Zetsu.

“So I talked to Itachi,” says Kakashi, “which, not helpful. No one can hold a Hyuuga grudge like an Uchiha, so he can barely muster half-a-shit to give about Neji.”

Neji’s a Hyuuga? It would explain why he’s not in any bingo book, and why no one knows him by his first name.

“Guy’s about to waltz over to the Hyuuga compound and personally challenge every main family member to a duel, or just acting like it,” continues Kakashi, shrugging. “He knows it won’t make a difference. All he can do is swear me into protecting Neji with my life, etc. As if I wouldn’t anyway.”

Tobi vanishes.

With Guy’s name to throw around, he gleans the gist of the situation by nightfall. Neji’s a goddamned genin from the Hyuuga branch family with a super-special Byakugan and more skill than their heir, and who gives a fuck? Shit. Tobi never cared about Hyuuga drama when he was a bitter Uchiha, and he’s sure as hell not going to start now.

Well. He has to. Konoha is a central part of his plans, and the Hyuuga clan is the Leaf village’s spine. It’s still Rin’s home, and with a few alterations here and there, it’ll be worthy of her. So it needs to stand until the Moon’s Eye Plan comes to fruition.

Danzo is Konoha’s most doujutsu-obsessed motherfucker, but Tobi doesn’t want to risk pinging Itachi’s radar. Not yet. He considers making a move for this Neji, but he bets the kid’s got Byakugan on him every minute of every day, and he’s not that cocky. Not yet.

His only recourse is to pay close attention to Kakashi’s next mission. Closer attention than usual.

“You know there’s more to our goals than Konoha,” says Pain/Nagato/whatever bullshit name he’s using when Tobi asks to be left alone for a couple of weeks. “In fact, the more unstable it gets, the better it will be for us in the long run.”

Tobi cannot wait for the moment to gut the little bastard like a fish. “Right, right. So I should keep a close eye on them and make sure they don’t go in the other direction and stabilize themselves.”

“Do what you like with your personal time,” Pain says through his favorite puppet, the one that was probably hot during its pre-corpse days. “As long as you don’t neglect your duties, I don’t care.”

Luckily, their current duties are “wander around starting shit throughout the nations so it will be easier to kidnap the jinchuriki”. Deidara can't be trusted for much, but he can be trusted to start shit. As long as Tobi teleports to him and makes sure he’s not blown off anything too crucial, it should be alright.

He visits Orochimaru, unpleasant as it always is, because no one seethes and plots against Konoha as much as Orochimaru. Currently, the snake has an underground lab in one of the most inhospitable tundras between The Lands of Fire and Lightning. Cleanliness is not a priority among Sound “shinobi”, so Tobi must endure the musk of old garbage, moss, rotting failed experiments, and general human waste. Oh, and poor visibility, because Orochimaru is too cheap for proper electric generators, nevermind that he’s the one Akatsuki member ass-deep in heroin smuggling.

“Classy, as always,” Tobi says when a barely pubescent boys leads him to Orochimaru’s operating room.

Rin would have palpitations at the filth. There’s blood and other unrecognizable fluids on the floor, rusting instruments on Orochimaru’s slab of an operating table, and a slim, pale, drugged-out kid lying on it. At least the kid isn’t naked.

“I can see how scandalized you are even through that silly mask, Tobi.” Orochimaru always says the name like he knows it’s bullshit, but no matter. There’s no way he knows anything significant. “I assure you this boy,” he pats the kid’s hip, and it might’ve been an innocent gesture from anyone else in the world, “is here of his own volition.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tobi says, adding a flair of embarrassment and regret to his voice. He’s not there so Orochimaru can rationalize his pathetic kid-diddling tendencies to an audience. “I was wondering what new info there is on Konoha.”

“Arrogant and self-important as ever,” says Orochimaru, his grip on the boy’s hip tightening. “ Assure our dear leader that my plans are progressing smoothly. Sand is desperate enough to try an invasion, and Rasa fairly easy to manipulate. Too bad his sons are so . . . unsuitable for experimentation.”

Does Orochimaru hear himself talk? Though it is . . . good? Yes, good to know that he has no interest in Shukaku’s jinchuriki.

“And is there anything going on with the Hyuuga?”

“What? What do I care about the Hyuuga?”

Tobi rolls his eye, then leaves. Who plans an invasion of Konoha without considering the Hyuuga sentries? There’s no supposedly smart asshole in the world stupider than Orochimaru.

His has two recourses left: Root and the original Tobi.

He’s still not ready to risk a confrontation with Itachi, not that he’s not strong enough to kill the precious little prodigy, if it comes to that, but . . . Kakashi just had to go and become shinobi best friends with the brat. So he goes to Madara’s old hideout and searches for the old Tobi, relieved to walk the narrow tunnels without Madara breathing down his neck. And he’d thought the old Elders unbearable.

He finds the old Tobi prostrate by the Gedo statue. It rises when it senses Tobi—fuck it, Obito—cheerful as a kid who’s been waiting for an adult’s attention for a long time.

“Is it time yet?” it asks.

Obito imagines an expression in its swirly, mottled face. “No, I just need a favor.”

He explains his predicament and the need to infiltrate Konoha without alerting its shinobi, and then somehow infiltrate the Hyuuga compound without alerting the Hyuuga. The only reason Tobi might manage it is because who expects to be spied on by a sentient, fungus-like being?

“Oh, I can help, I can!” says Tobi. “But first, I want some answers.”

“About what?” asks Obito, unable to hide his surprise. Tobi has no interests except for the Moon’s Eye Plan, Madara, and . . .

Obito listens with growing trepidation, then tries to remember a time when he dealt with something more absurd. “You want me to describe, in detail, what it feels like to take a shit?”

“Yes!” Tobi leans forward. “I lack the anatomy, and have never done it, you see?”

“It doesn’t feel like anything special!” says Obito, wishing Tobi was obsessed with fucking, because that would be marginally less humiliating to describe. “Unless . . .”

“Unless?” Tobi leans forward, disturbingly eager.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” says Obito, “if you can tell me all there is to know about the Hyuuga.”

So he might have to describe constipation to a being that’s a little too interested in it one day. It doesn’t even make the top ten list of nastiest shit Obito’s ever done. Pun not intended.

In the meantime, back to Kakashi.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta-reading!

Kakashi’s little performance art tribute is so wrong that it makes Obito grit his teeth at least once an hour. The kid Kakashi emulates hadn’t been slow due to a compulsive need to help everyone around him; he’d been slow because he’d been _slow_. If not for stolen Senju cells, he would still be a disaster. 

But Kakashi doesn’t get that. He makes good on his dumbass excuses, which makes them true. And hollow.

Take the trip with little Neji. Obito wouldn’t have slowed down for him (because he would have been the slower one) and used the extra time to meticulously teach him how to play blind. 

Neji takes to using the white cane easily enough since he doesn’t need to move his head around to look at things anyway. Acting blind, though, takes more time.

“You move to grab things too quickly,” Kakashi tells him. “Blind people feel around for things.”

By the time they make it to the border town Kakashi was ordered to investigate, Neji does the blind thing so well that he could fool almost anyone, which, kudos to Kakashi and everything, but why hadn’t he asked the kid anything about his family? Obito fucking would have. Why doesn’t the asshole emulate _that_ part of his personality? He needs more insight into that debacle than Tobi’s disinterested, off-mark summaries that miss all the stupidities and subtleties of human interactions. 

Obito considers, not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be better to just snuff Kakashi out of existence rather than deliver him to Rin wrapped in a fucking bow. 

On a brighter side, he can go back to Pain with news that he might care about. Kakashi is nosing about the Fire-Lightning trade routes that Akatsuki has been undermining for the better part of a year, all in hopes that the tentative truce between Konoha and Kumo falls apart. 

“Good,” says Pain. “The sooner Konoha and Kumo start another war, the better. They’re large enough to plunge the shinobi world into greater instability all on their own.”

Obito is more than willing to speed up his own plans and dispose of Pain earlier than planned, but he’s been working on his patience for years. He has resisted the urge to materialize in front of Kakashi and bludgeon him to death for letting Rin die, for example. Kakashi would be shocked enough that Obito could get in sudden head trauma that would render him defenseless, but what would be the point? Kakashi would barely feel anything after the first hit.

That being said, it’s definitely time to step up his occasional Kakashi-torture. Purposely overusing his Sharingan just to give the bastard an exquisite migraine ceased to be amusing years ago.

Kakashi is sniffing around a makeshift coal mine that has been branching out train tracks throughout the Fire-Lightning border. The mine produces little actual coal, but Orochimaru has been using it as a front to transport heroin into Fire Country, which has always been easier to infiltrate than Kumo’s unforgiving mountain ranges. Also, Orochimaru hates Konoha more, a sentiment that Obito sympathizes with. 

The simplest move would be to put Kakashi in Orochimaru’s crosshairs, but Orochimaru would almost certainly kill him. And if anyone killed Kakashi, it would be Obito. When the time was right. Besides, Neji’s just pretty, tragic, and barely-pubescent enough to attract Orochimaru’s interests, and Obito has some standards left.

Thankfully, there’s no dearth of small-time smack dealers in the world. Redirecting Kakashi’s attentions shouldn’t be too difficult.

Obito uses Kamui to perch himself nearby Kakashi, still cloaked in the other dimension’s atmosphere, where even Byakugan can’t find him. If only Kakashi knew that his death is never far . . . One day, Obito won’t be able to control himself.

Kamui isn’t the most flexible spying technique thanks to the amount of chakra required to maintain a connection between dimensions, so Obito only witnesses stuff he’s already gleaned. Kakashi plans to pass himself off as a recently impoverish merchant with a blind brother desperate for any kind of work. Loose, worn clothes make him look skinnier than he is, and a shabby wool hat hides Neji’s hair. And his forehead, just in case the pasty make-up hiding the Cursed Seal melts off in the heat.

The inn manager he’s spouting the sob-story to, a nondescript middle-aged woman, melts as he weaves the bullshit. All she sees is a handsome young man standing with his arm around his handsome, disabled younger brother.

“He’s been blind since birth, so he’s plenty good around the house, though a little slow,” Kakashi tells the housekeeper as he pats Neji’s shoulder, so earnest that even Obito’s half-tempted to appear and be his hero.

He retreats before he can get anything more useful, which is just as well. Seeing the world trip all over itself to give Kakashi what he wants the moment he takes his masks off has always made Obito nauseous. Maybe if everyone in the world was as hot as Kakashi, people wouldn’t go around trying to eat each other all the time. 

The innkeeper is inconsequential, but Kakashi’s ego is not. Obito takes great pride in keeping the score balanced whenever the world cuts Kakashi an undeserved break. He wants to protect the Hyuuga kid for his new, silly bestest friend forever, that moron Might Guy? Well, then Obito has a something to say about that. 

He’s just a genin. Obito could kill him in an instant. Only the memory that it’s what the Hyuuga elders want makes him hesitate. He might not have ever cared for his family, but disdain for the Hyuuga runs in Uchiha blood as much as the Sharingan itself.

Kakashi likes him, in his own way. Bringing him shaved ice cream from his shift at the Orochimaru’s construction site might be part of his concerned big brother cover, but sitting with him to eat in silence is not. Neither is giving him pointers on silent chakra manipulation exercises. Rin would find it sweet, Obito bets, but Rin had never seen Kakashi in an objective light. 

The kid’s made friends with the innkeeper’s daughter, a stout teen girl with a horrid case of pimples that probably wouldn’t dare to speak to him if she realized he can see her. She chatters away about some other girls who are _terrible_ and _superficial_ and _blah blah blah_ , pathetic teenage angst. Neji probably tunes her out, but she assumes it makes him a good listener. He folds clothes and dries dishes with the stilted movements of a blind kid, and somehow still manages to work faster than her.

Obito would kill her first, but that would attract Kakashi’s attention too soon. Besides, the girl drags Neji to a nearby market, hand grasping his elbow, describing every random thing to him in inane detail. Neji finally starts talking more, subtly leading her into revealing information that Obito wants to deliver to Kakashi.

“Old Hiro sold his house to a strange woman,” she tells Neji. “She’s got dark skin—do you know what dark skin is? Your brother said you were born blind?”

“Skin different than everyone else’s around here,” says Neji.

“Yeah, she’s definitely a foreigner,” says the girl. “Everyone says she must be a ninja because old Hiro has been saving that house for his daughter ever since her husband left for the city with some geisha, and they say shinobi play mind tricks.”

Yes, they do. And yes, they did. The dark skinned woman is one of Orochimaru’s flunkies, a rogue ninja from some minor village that thankfully spares no loyalty for the snake. Obito tells her that there’s a Konoha jounin sniffing around her workers, then warns her that if Orochimaru hears of it, he’ll bury her in the nastiest genjutsu he can device. 

When he gets back to Neji, Kakashi is with him and they’re crouching over a bird that’s dragging its wing on the gravel and cannot stop chirping a cry for help that no one will hear.

“The wing isn’t broken,” Neji is saying, his cover utterly blown. The white cane is on the ground, several feet away, and his eyes are fixed on Kakashi’s face. “It’s just a little cut, barely skin deep, where the wing muscles join its chest.”

“Alright,” says Kakashi, somehow not blowing up because the kid is endangering their mission. “So?”

“So I can help her,” says Neji. “She just needs someone to bring her water and seeds for a couple of days.”

“You’re supposed to be blind,” Kakashi reminds him.

“Aiya likes me,” says Neji. “She’ll help.”

“And how will you explain finding this bird in the first place?”

“I heard it singing.”

“Neji—”

“—She has no reason to suspect I’m faking anything!”

This would be the point where the old Kakashi’s voice would grow cold, quote some random regulation, and tell his subordinate to shut the fuck up and not endanger the mission. 

“Go get the cane,” says Kakashi, scooping the bird up, careful to avoid its injured wing.

From there, the scene grows saccharine. Kakashi’s learned some basic healing jutsu (from Rin, who’d insisted that he should be better equipped to handle himself before he killed her), and now he’s more than happy to pass the knowledge on. Usually, the goodwill would crash into the wall of Kakashi’s utter inability to explain anything in a way that a normal person can understand, but precious little Neji doesn’t need words. 

Obito leaves for Kamui’s barren dimension, where he can seethe in relative peace. 

During their years together as Minato’s genin, Kakashi had never attempted to teach Rin a single jutsu or kata. He’d avoided talking to Obito, for the most part. Now he buys ice cream and heals birds for a kid born under a star as bright as his. There are no stars inside Kamui, yet Obito cannot forget the shine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot last time: [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/) is here.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta-reading!

Tobi insists on asking a ream of questions about defecation before sharing what he’s learned of the Hyuuga, and Obito has to subject himself to five minutes of unsatisfactory descriptions about what it feels like to empty his bowels. Out of all the things Tobi could fixate on, why must it be _literal_ shit? Tobi can’t really eat, sleep, fuck, or even get angry. He’s just a bundle of . . . Can it be a fetish if it doesn’t seem to be a sexual thing?

“You’re not very well-spoken,” Tobi complains, imparting disappointment even though he has no facial muscles to make expressions. 

“I’m not a poet,” says Obito. “Not that there’s legions of human poets wasting their skills on poop. Not literally, anyway. Your turn now. What’s going on with the Hyuuga?”

“They’re upset because this Neji is more talented than the heir, who stutters and won’t look anyone in the eye.”

“And?”

“And they want Hiashi to kill Neji and brand Hinata, so his younger daughter can be the heir,” says Tobi. “It seems she has a more suitable personality for a ninja.”

In other words, she’s an asshole. “And?”

“And some cousins want to kill Hiashi, maybe?” says Tobi, cottoning on to Obito’s impatience, finally. “Oh! And one of the Hyuuga men impregnated some random civilian woman. Is that like defecating?”

“Unbelieveable,” says Obito. “And no, unless it’s a very humiliating impregnation for everyone involved,” he adds as he walks off.

It sounds like the Hyuuga are crumbling under their own curse seals and bullshit, and Obito has no strategy, technique, or ace in the hole that could stop it. And if the Hyuuga go down, Konoha would be ripe for the picking . . .

Which is what Obito wants. He stops in his tracks, glares at the walls of Madara’s musty lair, wondering why he’s breathing so hard. Kamui doesn’t calm him, but it gives him a world to level while his blood boils. He’s never found anything living in the starless, moonless world, and it’s probably for the best. Sometimes, he imagines that Kamui is taking him inside himself, and that’s why it’s barren, cold, and empty except for the shuriken and explosives he squirrels away.

Maybe if Kakashi had been the one to awaken his Sharingan’s Mangekyo, then Kamui would be some dignified library next to a dojo or training fields. Kakashi’s probably so used to being showered with praise that the place might come equipped with bikini-clad cheerleaders. 

Anyway, things with Kakashi are at a stand-still. Against all reasoning, Kakashi seems content enough to play the hapless construction worker. Without a Memorial Stone for Kakashi to babble his deepest, most boring secrets to, Obito can hardly guess what he’s thinking. It can’t be to keep Neji out of Konoha for its own sake while . . . What? Guy or whoever handles the people who want him dead? Is Neji—Neji himself, not just his clan—important enough that Konoha would waste one of its best jounin just to keep him out of the village? Does Kakashi even care about Orochimaru’s drug routes? 

If only he would take Neji a mile down the train tracks, he’d see the station where Orochimaru’s smack is unloaded. Or Neji would.

So Obito decides to sell Neji some drugs. Or the stupid girl chasing him around. Anything to get Kakashi interested in the stupid smuggling routes.

For someone who’s apparently destabilizing the Hyuuga clan with unprecedented talent, Neji is pretty boring. He helps the girl with her chores, meditates, helps the girl with more chores, sits around with Kakashi in silence, eats, helps the girl with chores, meditates, then sleeps. He doesn’t even complain about being unable to train, which makes Obito question Tobi’s reports about his supposed talent. 

Kakashi has been dallying with the construction workers for almost two weeks before the kid does anything that Obito considers mildly interesting. He’s on a grocery run with that inane girl, and they run into one of the bullies she keeps droning on about. Perhaps the head bully, a generically pretty girl with a perpetual smirk, who knocks Neji’s bag out of his hand. 

To his credit, Neji doesn’t drop his cover for an instant. The potatoes fare well, but a bottle of vinegar shatters and its fumes twist the bully’s smirk into a sour frown. The innkeeper’s girl starts making some noise about wasted money, but the bully’s got her blubbering with a couple of barbs about pimples, or clothes, or who cares, and it doesn’t pique Obito’s interest until the bully turns her attention to Neji.

“You have no real friends,” says Neji, face angled so it seems like he’s not even looking at the bully. “People humor you because your parents have a little money, and because they’d rather you direct your cruelty elsewhere. If someone richer or prettier ever comes along, you’d be their first target.”

It’s not groundbreaking as far as takedowns go, but it’s enough to chase the girl away. The innkeeper’s daughter looks at Neji like he’s slayed the Kyubi itself, and if she wasn’t in love with him before, then she falls in love with him that instant.

“Can we get the potatoes?” asks Neji, holding the white cane close to his chest. 

It means nothing to him. Less than it means to Obito, probably. He doesn’t consider that he shouldn’t become that stupid girl’s hero because he will return to his world of missions and infiltrations before the summer is done, and probably be dead before he hits twenty-five. 

Before he kills someone out of sheer boredom, Obito gets a chance to approach the kid in a somewhat natural fashion the very next day. A caravan of circus performers stops by the town on its way to the port. There’s enough people around that the innkeeper’s girl drags Neji to the celebrations, happily describing the dances and fire tricks he supposedly cannot see. A few tipsy Leaf jounin create fancier spectacles in Konoha on any random day, but the girl still seems heartbroken that Neji can’t enjoy the performance.

It’s then that Obito decides that, if he can finagle it, he’ll make sure that girl learns what Neji really is. 

In the meantime, he makes a few alterations to his physical appearance (brown hair rather than black, tanned rather than pale, eye patch for the right socket, and no alterations for all those scars) and slips into the crowd, for all that it amounts to the name. He’s maybe two feet away from Neji and the girl when he notices that, somehow, Neji has picked up that something about him is off.

Obito keeps walking towards them anyway. Kakashi is currently dirty dancing with a geisha, which Obito assumes means that he’s trying to get laid and might be distracted. Certainly, it can’t be part of his stupid little act, since no geisha would ever register Obito’s existence, now or before his face got fucked up. Not even Rin could ever muster enough pity to give Obito the time of day, and apparently she’d never been good enough to warrant Kakashi’s attention.

“You two look a little lonely,” says Obito, accentless, but tinted with just enough smarm to prickle anyone with a lick of sense.

“Oh, we’re fine,” says the girl, beaming at him as she pats Neji’s arm, “but my friend here doesn’t do well in crowds.”

“We should go,” says Neji.

Obito lays his human hand on Neji’s head before he can gesture the girl forward. It’s a light touch, probably not strong enough that Neji feels much through the wool hat he’s wearing, but the kid still freezes. 

“Hold on, little friend,” says Obito, smiling at the innkeeper’s girl. “I’m just a travelling salesman handing out some samples.” He reaches into his pocket for a couple of heroin baggies decorated with Orochimaru’s snake brand. 

“Oh, thank you,” says the girl, smiling as she examines the bag. “Is it tea?”

“It’s better—” 

Kakashi grasps Obito’s wrist before he can get “injected” out, his solitary dark eye flat and unwelcoming. “That’s enough, friend,” he says, lifting Obito’s hand off of Neji’s head.

Obito fights not to grin as he takes his arm back because it’s the real Kakashi in front of him, finally, not the parody crying at the Memorial Stone or pretending to read Jiraiya’s shitty porn to keep people away.

“I’m just talking to them, is all,” says Obito, eye flitting to Neji briefly. 

The kid’s hand is over Kakashi’s belt and he’s continually tapping an SOS message onto his hip. Obito doesn’t know what he’s seen, or even when, since he hasn’t activated his Byakugan, but he figures it’s as good a time as any to retreat. He’s in no mood for a real confrontation with Kakashi. Not yet.

But he still stalks them, though shielded by Kamui’s dark shroud. Kakashi relieves the girl of the drugs, then begs off, dragging Neji along. The geisha spots Kakashi leaving and rushes forward to plant a big, wet kiss on his chin, and isn’t that just typical? Kakashi graces her with a genuine smile, the kind that would have made Rin swoon if he’d ever flashed it her way. He plants a short kiss on the geisha’s mouth, then says something about Neji, who the she hasn’t registered even though the brat is standing right next to them, and excuses himself.

“What got you so spooked?” Kakashi asks later, as he flushes the heroin bags down the drain in the little room he shares with Neji at the inn.

“I wasn’t spooked,” protests Neji. “I was concerned.”

“Then what got you so _concerned?_ ” says Kakashi, rolling his eye.

“He had a Sharingan under that eyepatch.”

 _What the fuck?_ Obito thinks as Kakashi whirls around.

“You’re sure?”

The kid hadn’t activated his Byakugan. Obito would have felt that. Hell, he would have seen it.

“I know what I saw,” says Neji.

“How often do you see a Sharingan?” demands Kakashi.

“You mean besides yours every day?” 

“Yes,” says Kakashi, and Obito bets he’s the only one who hears the edge of impatience in his tone. “Besides mine, which is transplanted and therefore constantly active.”

“Oh,” says Neji, then goes right on without apologizing for the brief snottiness. “His wasn’t transplanted, but it was active.”

Fuck. Obito had forgotten to turn his Sharingan off after exiting Kamui’s dimension.

“He was using genjutsu to make himself look a little different,” continues Neji. “But he didn’t bother to hide the scars on the right side of his face.”

Obito has to kill the little fucker, but he can’t do it without eliminating Kakashi first, and the primary reason Neji needs to die is so that Kakashi doesn’t figure out that Obito’s still alive. He retreats fully into Kamui, then appears at Madara’s lair and punches the mortar so hard that the wall trembles.

“Tobi!” he screams.

“Here to tell me more about bowel movements?” asks the bastard as he rises from the ground.

“Tell me everything you heard about Neji,” says Obito.

“Who?”

“The Hyuuga kid I told you to investigate last time!” Obito indulges in a second punch at the wall, then breathes deeply and exhales through his nose. “Tell me about his skills, especially his insight.”

“Oh,” says Tobi. “The boy with the special dojutsu. His cousins say he sees chakra all the time, even when he doesn’t focus all that hard. They seem upset about it.”

“And you didn’t think that was important to tell me?”

“You didn’t ask,” says Tobi. “They also say he’s a very good fighter.”

“Fine, fine,” says Tobi, thoughts swimming around his head like sharks.

He could teleport back to Kakashi, bring Tobi along, and just overwhelm the inn until Neji is dead. It would break Kakashi just a little bit more, and he might still not have a reason to suspect that Obito is himself. 

“Come on,” he says to Tobi, then drags them both into Kamui’s world. He keeps them shrouded in the dead world’s veil while Kakashi interrogates Neji.

“I’m no artist,” Neji is saying.

“I can see that,” says Kakashi, frowning at the awful sketch that Neji has produced. 

Obito guesses it looks like him. And like any other random, dark-haired man.

“I would recognize him if I see him again,” says Neji. 

“Is this him? Them?” asks Tobi. “Do you think they’ll go to the bathroom?”

“Please stop talking about shit,” says Obito. “On my signal, keep your sights on the kid while I distract the jounin.” He would tell Tobi to kill Neji, but then Tobi wouldn’t stop until the brat is dead, even if it means going through Kakashi.

“And you’re sure both his right arm and leg are transplants?” asks Kakashi.

“Yes,” says Neji. “They aren’t human limbs either. The chakra doesn’t flow right.” 

Kakashi stares at Neji’s shitty sketch for a moment, then pockets it. “Rest well tonight. We head back to Konoha first thing in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know when Kishimoto gives his characters random powers as the plot demands (lol @ Sasuke's hawks, like half of Itachi's godmoding genjutsus, and everything about Pain)? Well, I don't remember just how special Neji's Byakugan was, but I need it to be a little extra-special here.
> 
> Also, [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/) is here.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta-reading!

The next morning, it’s obvious that Kakashi does not intend to tell the innkeeper that he plans to take off. Without sparing a warning for the silly woman, or the handful of patrons working their way through some bland breakfast, he makes some dumb excuse about wanting to take Neji along for breakfast so he can try one of the caravan cook’s natto, which tastes like what they used to eat back home, and _oh_ the nostalgia. Of course, the innkeeper melts and tells him to take his time, and that’s when Obito’s patience snaps.

“As we talked about,” he tells Tobi, bracing himself. Though he could flatten the inn with a sneeze, so there’s nothing to be bracing himself for.

Neji is talking to the innkeeper’s daughter, or rather, she’s chattering at him. The instant Tobi breaches Kamui’s boundary, Neji stiffens. The girl doesn’t notice, but Kakashi is on alert at once. Swift as a demon, Tobi emerges from the floor, a hand going for Neji’s wrist.

Chakra bursts out of Neji’s pores; thin, sharp tendrils that make Tobi yelp like a kicked puppy. Neji drops the white cane and strikes at his neck, and though Tobi seems to dodge, he lets out another cry as he leaps backwards.

“Rude, _rude!_ ” Tobi opens and closes his fist, then rubs at his wrist.

“Neji?” The innkeeper’s girl stares as if he’s grown a second head.

“You should run,” says Neji, looking straight at her. The patrons, perhaps used to shinobi fights breaking out around them during their travels, are already scurrying away. Pity that there’s few enough that a panicked riot doesn’t break out.

Obito wishes he could see the confusion and shock dawn on stupid girl’s pimply face, but Kakashi’s coming for Tobi already, kunai in hand. The blade doesn’t scratch the hide that passes for Tobi’s skin, and Kakashi’s eye widens as Tobi’s body spreads open from the tip of the sternum outward, like it’s the world’s creepiest blooming flower. Kakashi jumps back, still gripping his kunai, obviously at a loss for words.

Before Neji can warn Kakashi of what he’s seen—or what he’s not seeing—Obito leaves the safety of Kamui’s shroud. For dramatic effect, he arrives in a wave of fire that rips through the inn’s infrastructure, cracking its floor and shattering its windows. He appears behind the innkeeper, just to wipe her off the face of the world for not getting with the damned program and at least _trying_ to run, wishing her dumb daughter hadn’t taken Neji’s advice and disappeared to the second floor.

Kakashi makes a move as if to help, but he has to intercept Tobi’s next attack towards Neji. The shadow clone he sends to help the innkeeper doesn’t even give Obito pause, and the innkeeper’s neck is as fragile as the stem of a violet. He hops onto the counter as the woman’s body crumbles to the floor, laughing at Kakashi’s attempt to pierce through Tobi’s flesh. Maybe he’d have better luck if his primary concern wasn’t the Hyuga brat.

“Too bad her daughter isn’t here to see how this world rewards kindness,” says Obito, raising his good leg so he can lay his chin on his knee.

“It’s him,” says Neji, sliding behind Kakashi, as if that’s gonna protect him.

Tobi anneals himself, then hops beside Obito to whine, “Can I kill the white-eyed one?”

“Ssh,” says Obito, as though quieting a rowdy pet. “All in good time.”

“This doesn’t concern the kid, Uchiha-san,” says Kakashi.

“Whoa, there’s something open to interpretation, and how long has it been since someone called me _that?_ ” He turns to Tobi, as if the question is for him.

“At least a decade,” says Tobi.

Kakashi reaches for his eyepatch and reveals his Sharingan. Obito smirks behind his mask, wishing that Kakashi could see it. After everything, Kakashi has his stupid teammate to thank for all that makes him special. Except for the looks and the intelligence.

“You can go and warn Sarutobi,” says Obito, “but I want the kid.”

“No deal,” says Kakashi.

Obito vanishes before he consciously makes a decision, but when he reappears to plunge a kunai through Neji’s neck, he has to shift at the last instant to avoid Kakashi’s chest. His kunai strikes the wall, and he sidesteps to avoid Kakashi’s counterattack.

“No fair, I wanna try to eat that one!” says Tobi.

“You _can’t_ eat, dumbass,” says Obito, glaring at Kakashi as his precious genin stays behind him, trying not to shake.

“Why does an Uchiha want to give the Hyuga elders what they want?” asks Kakashi, doing a much better job of hiding the fear he must be feeling.

Obito laughs, and it sounds unhinged even to his own ears. He laughs harder when he catches the innkeeper’s dead stare as it glares at him from the floor. “This is so not about those pompous assholes,” he says, looking at Kakashi. “It’s about teaching this entire fucking town what happens when they welcome strangers into their lives.”

“But the kid’s not part of the town,” says Kakashi.

“Trying to reason with me, Hatake-san?” Obito leans against the wall and doesn’t restrain another bitter laugh. “It won’t work. There’s nothing left in me to reel back from the void.”

“Someone’s been wasting a little too much time at the theater,” says Neji, and Obito laughs again, not so much at the words, but at the look that passes over Kakashi’s face.

“Hah, I get it!” says Tobi. “He’s funny. Maybe I shouldn’t try to eat him after all.”

“Eh, I’ll give it a C for effort, as far as snark goes,” says Obito, then vanishes into Kamui with a brief signal to Tobi.

Kakashi’s thrown himself in front of the kid again, stupidly trying to split his attention between Obito’s kunai and Tobi’s lunge. The kid’s just good enough with his chakra to repel Tobi’s ensnaring attempt, but Kakashi has no way of countering Kamui. Obito throws him at the opposite wall, then vanishes again. He appears behind the kid, grips him by the neck, and squeezes warningly when he tries that Gentle Fist bullshit. Tobi shambles to his feet, scratching at the swirly lines that make up his face and moaning theatrically.

“You’re not gonna be fast enough,” warns Obito when Kakashi’s hand glows and the sound of chirping birds floods the inn.

“I don’t care.”

Obito retreats into Kamui, hoping that Kakashi ends up killing his precious genin, just like the fucker killed Rin. No such luck. When Obito reappears, Kakashi’s hand is through the counter, and Tobi is an instant from husking over his flesh.

“Hold the fuck up,” says Obito, and Tobi re-anneals itself, the single hole where the right eye appears to be seeming to frown for a second.

Kakashi rips his hand out of the counter and moves closer to Neji, for all the good it will do.

“You got what you need out of him,” says Obito. “What’s dying for him gonna do now, except put all of Konoha at risk?”

“All of Konoha isn’t here right now,” says Kakashi as his hand starts glowing with lightning once more. “He is.”

Obito snorts, and next time he vanishes into Kamui, he doesn’t come back out. No, he rips Neji from Kakashi’s side, wishing he could relish the expression on Kakashi’s face. The kid gasps as he appears inside Kamui, looking around with veiny eyes, breathing hard. For someone like him, the black, barren emptiness of Kamui’s dimension must feel like the darkest pit in the bottom of the ocean.

“There’s nothing but emptiness for miles,” says Obito. “Now then, what’s your bargain?” Everyone tries something inside Kamui; anything from fighting, to threatening, to begging.

“No,” says Neji, straightening his back and letting the veins around his eyes recede. “Do what you will. I’ve had a lifetime of practice at not reacting to bullies.”

“Shame I don’t have time to find out what would break that composure,” says Obito, reaching for the kid’s forehead. He doesn’t have to do anything the Hyuga elders would like to fuck with Kakashi. Sometimes, it _is_ possible to have a cake and eat it too.

Neji’s still screaming when Obito drags them back to the inn, but it’s a reflexive scream devoid of personality. Kakashi musters enough strength to slam Tobi through the window behind the counter, then rushes towards Neji as the boy crumbles and hits the floor, a pace away from the dead innkeeper. The Cursed Seal is a beacon on his forehead as Kakashi crouches to take his pulse. Kakashi's frown—scared, but painfully determined—makes Obito giddy.

“I’m nothing if not flexible,” he tells Kakashi, then vanishes and collects Tobi.

“No fair, I didn’t get to kill anyone,” Tobi complains when they reach the Gedo Statue. “What was even the point of all that? Huh?”

Obito melts back into Kamui without answering. The point is to remind Kakashi that he doesn’t get to go on with his life while Rin rots and he . . . Obito takes a deep breath. It does nothing. He screams, lost inside Kamui where no one will ever hear him.

It takes him half an hour to calm down enough that he can go back to the inn to check on Kakashi. The bastard has transferred Neji to their old room, and the innkeeper’s daughter is following him around like a ghost, following instructions to bring him water and soap. He washes the first-degree burn on his hand left behind by the Chidori, then does a piss-poor job of comforting the stupid girl when she starts crying about her dead mother.

Neji wakes the next morning, just in time to see the town’s mayor come to demand that they leave at once, all but ready to piss himself. Kakashi has the gall to bow and promise that they’ll be gone by lunchtime, as if he couldn’t wipe the hobbled bastard off the face of the earth with a sneeze. He tries to offer warnings about Orochimaru’s heroin, but the old man doesn’t want to hear it. Why would he, when the heroin trade has brought so much work and trade to his nowhere little town?

The girl still looks stricken by the time Kakashi is ready to set out, so much so that she can’t muster any outrage about Neji’s lies. Ever the consummate softie, Kakashi takes her to the travelling performers and hoists her off on the geisha he’d been about to fuck the day before.

“Take her along to the capital,” he tells the geisha, handing her a bag of money, “then hand her over to our travelling merchants. They should have a squad or two with them for guard.”

“What if I just pocket your money and go, Mr. Shinobi?” asks the geisha, looking at him with even more naked attraction than before.

“I’ll just have to trust that you won’t,” says Kakashi, shrugging.

His spiel to the innkeeper’s girl is like a band-aid on a rotting, cancerous ulcer that goes all the way down to the bone.

“I know this doesn’t mean much now,” he says to her a little ways off from the performers, “and it probably won’t mean much ever, but I _am_ sorry about what’s happened. If you get to the Leaf-nin, tell them that Hatake Kakashi sent you and they’ll take you along to Konoha. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.” He gives her a separate bag of money, and a kunai that she can’t use, with some engravings that she probably can’t see, much less read. “Show them this so they know you really met me,” says Kakashi as she grabs the kunai. “Survive. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”

It’s certainly all Kakashi will ever be able to do for as long as Obito breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/) is here.


	5. Epilogue: Ibiki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [luvsanime02](http://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/pseuds/luvsanime02) for beta-reading!
> 
> I almost posted this as a one-shot, but ultimately decided that it would make no sense to anyone who hasn't read the previous four chapters. It's the longest section, proving that I have a lot of work to do ending things.

The only thing worse than interrogating captured enemies is interrogating Leaf ninja. Even if they haven’t gone rogue. Ibiki can’t very well go around torturing their own talent, especially if said talent is more likely to bite off an interrogator’s nose and spit it back at them than reveal any secrets.

Anko has a sweeter face than him, and subjects (men in particular) underestimate her. Ibiki likes to stay back and play the scarred brute while subjects dream of what a golem like him will do if they don’t cooperate with the funny kunoichi who doesn’t wear a bra under her mesh. The sun streaming through the window leaves no room to consider that she might be wearing an undershirt that’s close to her skin tone. Not that it makes a difference with a Hyuuga who probably doesn’t register clothes in the first place, if the rumors about the potency of his Byakugan are to be believed.

Neji’s interrogation is actually the easiest part of the whole debacle, if only because he has no personal attachment to whatever the hell is going on. Or so he believes.

“The Uchiha didn’t care about me,” he says when Anko asks if he’s ever had any interactions with the anyone from the Uchiha clan. Sasuke perhaps? “And no, I don’t have significant relationships with any of them. I’ve seen Itachi in passing when he meets with Guy-sensei and Kakashi. I mean, Hatake-san. But we’ve never spoken.”

“Hatake says this Uchiha asshole fixated on you immediately,” says Anko. 

“Not really,” says Neji. “He barely looked at me the whole time, even when I taunted him, or when he tried to give me heroin. It was Hatake-san he wanted to attack. Not physically, but emotionally. He was very angry.”

“Why?” 

Neji shrugs again. “How would I know?”

Anko tries to press the issue, but Ibiki waves her off. His assessment matches with Kakashi’s, more or less. The mysterious Uchiha’s fixation with Neji had been oddly superficial, though Kakashi hadn’t suggested that the attack had been directed at him instead. Not without prompting anyway. And he'd been cagier than usual, completely baffled as to who might want to spare his life, but make him suffer.

“Did he say anything of import in . . . the strange world?” Ibiki theorizes that 'world' as a blip in Neji’s memory caused by the stress of the situation, never mind that Kakashi concurred with the ridiculous theory that the mysterious Uchiha had be teleporting rather than showing off a particularly fast version of the Body Flicker technique. 

“No, just standard evil bastard threats,” says Neji. “Then he activated my Cursed Seal, worse than anyone ever has, and I passed out.”

Ibiki doesn’t want to rehash the boy’s dramatic descriptions of the strange world that the Uchiha supposedly took him to. He’s already noted the possible psychological abnormality in the kid’s profile.

“Here’s a folder with pictures of all known Uchiha,” he says, placing it on the table. “Look through them; see if you can find the your attacker.”

The pictures aren’t labeled because the less Neji knows, the better. 

“He doesn’t seem hysterical to me,” says Anko from an adjacent room as Neji flips through the pages. The one-way mirror is only a formality for the Hyuuga, but Ibiki likes his formalities, and it’s not like Neji’s ears are special.

“He’s frayed around the edges,” says Ibiki, “or he wouldn’t be trying so hard to look nonchalant. But considering his circumstances, I’m not sure we can blame it on this clusterfuck of a mission.”

“Hey, maybe he can read lips?” says Anko.

“I don’t care if he can,” says Ibiki, “although . . . it would be a useful skill to teach the Hyuuga. I’ll make a note of it.”

Neji raises a hand and waves a page at them, confirming that he knows that they’re watching him. It’s a photo of Kakashi’s dead teammate, the one that gave him the Sharingan. 

“You’re sure?” Ibiki asks once he’s back in the room.

“Yes,” says Neji. “He’s older now, has scars on the right side of his face, and his right eye is missing, but that’s him.”

Bullshit, or so Ibiki hopes. The last thing Konoha needs is one of its best jounin in some melodramatic pissing contest with a supposedly dead teammate that left him with a textbook of psychological hang-ups. But he has to admit that it would make a distressing amount of sense.

“Finish going through the folder,” says Ibiki, hoping that Neji will identify a second Uchiha even though it would make his testimony more unreliable. “If anyone asks, especially Kakashi, you could identify no one.” 

They leave the kid with another jounin from Intelligence because it’s almost time for part two of their sad attempt to clean up this mess. Kakashi and Itachi have both been called to a conference room at the Tower, and Ibiki will send an entire jounin squad after Kakashi if the bastard tries to play the irresponsible moron. He is in no fucking mood.

“He won’t be able to lie to his family,” Anko says.

“No, but at this point, I’ll settle for him not blabbing to Kakashi,” says Ibiki as they reach the Tower. “It’s not like he knows Obito’s name, so we should be fine. The Hyuuga have no lost love for Kakashi.”

Luckily, Kakashi is spooked enough that he bothers to show up on time for once. Ibiki still glares around the conference room as Anko sits at the desk and smirks. If it’d been up to him, they’d be meeting in one of the underground detention centers that Intelligence has wrested from Root’s grasp, but those will never be truly secure. Better to talk out in the open, at the Tower’s top level, with the sun shining through the window like a blessing. 

Kakashi lounges on the couch, knees spread and arm thrown over a back cushion. His hand is somewhere behind Uchiha Itachi’s back (and the kid will always be an Uchiha, no matter what he might do). There’s still room for someone to sit between them, but for ninja of their caliber and neuroses, they might as well be cuddling. The last thing Ibiki ever needed is those two joining forces, so of course, that’s how it’s turned out. 

“I’ve been telling you for years that your cute habit of handing in shitty reports would come back to bite us in the ass,” says Ibiki, wasting the effort necessary to shoot Kakashi a glare. 

“I told you I don’t remember when and how I pissed this guy off,” says Kakashi. Then, because he’s an asshole, he yawns.

“What, precisely, were you doing when the guy showed up?” asks Ibiki.

“I told you, making up some nonsense for the innkeeper.”

“I mean the day before,” says Ibiki. “When he tried to give Neji heroin.”

“There was an impromptu party with some travelling performers,” says Kakashi. “I was dancing with this . . . less than exclusive geisha, shall we say. I was a song from getting laid.” He shakes his head and sighs wistfully. “The ordeal killed my libido. The true tragedy here. She was hot.” 

Anko looks back at Ibiki and rolls her eyes, then turns back to Kakashi. “Just make a list of all the women you’ve fucked and/or killed.”

“That number is at least in the double digits,” says Kakashi. 

“Slut,” says Anko.

“Hey, I just killed most of them.”

“Just write the list,” says Itachi.

“I don’t remember all their names,” protests Kakashi.

“Dumb slut,” says Anko.

“Excuse me?” says Kakashi. “Who in this room has fucked everyone else in this room? Including the teenager.”

“I’m not here to listen to you judge each other’s sex lives,” says Ibiki, alarmed when Itachi actually rolls his eyes. “Make the list, Kakashi, even if it’s incomplete.” 

“Who’s to say he’s upset about a woman?” asks Itachi. “Could be a male lover, a family member, a friend, himself maybe?”

“Just make a list of anyone you’ve ever pissed off,” says Anko.

“Now you’re all being unreasonable,” says Kakashi. “I’ve been a ninja literally for as long as I can remember.”

“Cry more,” says Anko.

“Stop.” Has Ibiki mentioned how much he hates interrogating jounin? He describes the injuries Neji reported to Itachi. “Anyone in your family have those?”

“No,” says Itachi. 

“Anyone in your family know of a teleportation genjutsu?” 

“One that would fool a Hyuga and another Sharingan?” Itachi shakes his head. 

“Not even you?”

“Yes, I stalked Kakashi to the border and tried to kill Guy’s student.”

“Spare me your sarcasm and answer the question.” If Itachi could do it, then so could other Uchiha.

“Yes, I could theoretically use genjutsu to make someone believe I’m teleporting,” admits Itachi. “But it wouldn’t work on a Hyuga. I mean, if I guess if I worked hard enough, I could trap a Hyuga in a genjutsu, but at that point, I’d go for ninjutsu or shuriken. Probably. I’ve never fought one.” 

“And I told you it wasn’t genjutsu,” says Kakashi. 

Useless, the both of them. They’re interested in reassuring themselves, not finding the truth. “You’re both dismissed,” says Ibiki.

“He can dismiss us now,” Kakashi tells Itachi, putting on an offended air. “No updates on who the hell this might be?”

“Fuck if we know,” says Anko, standing up. “Right now, our leading theory is ‘an Uchiha who really hates your guts’.”

“And for a while after you got that Sharingan,” adds Ibiki, “that was all of them.”

“I think.” Itachi starts, more careful than Ibiki has ever heard him, “everyone in my family is more likely to hold a personal grudge against me.”

“They’re scared of you.” Ibiki ignores any thought that it might be a cruel thing to say to the boy. “Besides, they know Kakashi is your friend.”

Ibiki leaves before they can argue further, confident that Anko can irritate them into going home and/or the Memorial Stone to sulk. The last part of his preliminary investigation will be the worst. He has to interrogate the dregs of the Uchiha clan.

Despite the reputation that Ibiki has spent his entire career cultivating, he is not fond of torture. It rarely yields reliable information, and fosters resentment that survives generations. All things being equal, Ibiki prefers bribes. Enough bribes, and subjects leave his cells feeling either vindicated or guilty that they’ve capitulated to the enemy under no real threats. Either way, they are effectively neutralized. Best case scenario, they leave as tentative allies. 

Ibiki has no bribes for the Uchiha clan, and even less threats. He can’t make any noise about targeting those too young to have been involved with the last attempted coup because Hokage-sama would never back such an operation, not when the youngest Uchiha aren’t even Academy-aged. Ibiki makes no threats that he cannot follow through with.

Uchiha Sasuke is also under no suspicion, at least no more than he was prior to Kakashi’s return with news of a rogue Uchiha. Another one. The kid is just not strong enough to pull off what Kakashi and Neji described, and besides, Ibiki has studied Boar’s last (shitty) mission report. Broken arm. Regardless, Itachi would protect his brother. It’s a situation that makes Ibiki nervous, but for the time being, he’s content to watch Sasuke carefully.

He gathers a team of his most-trusted ANBU, ones he knows have no connection to Root, and heads to the Uchiha compound. On the way, he asks the jounin he left with Neji if the kid had singled out another photo.

“No,” says the jounin. “He fixated on Obito’s pictures, including the ones that weren’t headshots. He even picked out Obito’s Academy picture.”

Fucking wonderful. Ibiki isn’t ready to add Uchiha Obito to the bingo books just yet, but he can’t ignore the possibility that the bastard is alive if Neji is _that_ sure about it. He supposes, hopes actually, that it’s all part of an elaborate genjutsu.

“Don’t write this down anywhere yet,” he tells the jounin. 

The Uchiha compound seems calm, but it’s Ibiki’s job to look for shadows inside shadows, and manipulations inside joy. The handful of kids running around make him wonder about what depths their parents would sink to in order to protect them. There are adults hobbling about, raking leaves or painting fans out in their yard, who glare at them while pretending not to see them. Cripples or not, they once permeated the village’s ranks, rarely below chuunin-level. Their gazes chill Ibiki’s blood.

Sasuke is playing with a pair of kids a few houses away from Fugaku’s. He blanches at the sight of Ibiki approaching, then says something to the kids and rushes off, presumably home. That’s fine. Fugaku already knows that Ibiki is coming, and has probably known since he set foot in the outskirts of the compound.

But it’s Mikoto who greets them, playing the pleasant housewife, as if they’re unexpected visitors rather than ANBU. She says something about Fugaku being down with a nasty stomach flu (which Ibiki knows damned well is heroin), and insists on serving tea and lemonade while an ANBU squad gathers the clan, one by one.

“I’ll be brief,” Ibiki tells each one of them as they sit in front of him, “an unidentified Uchiha attacked one of our jounin during a recon mission. It’s in your best interests, and in your clan’s best interests, if you tell everything you know, or think you know, about it.”

“It was probably Itachi,” says one of the ex-chuunin, nodding earnestly. 

“Maybe you upset him,” adds another as he rests his chin on his stump. “He always was a prickly little bastard.”

“Which jounin?” asks one of the kunoichi. “We had lots of grudges in those last few months. I could give you some pointers.” She goes on to name five dead Uchiha.

“How come you’re so sure it’s an Uchiha?” asks a guy who’d never made it past genin because he’d worked in the police force for fifteen years. “”You know a Sharingan can be transplanted, right?”

“Maybe it was Hatake,” suggests a jounin who had gotten into a fist-fight with Kakashi years before the coup. “He’s been batshit for at least a decade now.” 

“I don’t know who it could be, honestly,” says a woman who’s more interested in shushing a fresh baby that refuses to stop wailing. She’s balancing the thing on her forearm as she tries to persuade it to take a bottle. “Don’t care, even more honestly.”

“I don’t know,” says another of the ex-jounin who managed not to goad Itachi into killing her. “But when you catch the good bastard, tell him he’s got at least one admirer.” 

“Madara,” spits out a middle-aged woman who’d lost two sons during Itachi’s attack. Because they’d committed ritual suicide, but the woman would not be made to see reason. “He’s come back from the grave to lay waste to this treacherous hole of a village.” 

“Well, it could be every last one of us,” says a wisp of an old woman with hair white as newly-fallen snow. Elder Rakshasha, last of the Uchiha elders, chuckling as she enjoys a pipe. “Sucks to be you right now.” 

“Impressions, Yuu?” Ibiki asks his jounin when the old woman limps off.

“They’re fucking enjoying this, sir.”

“We’ll see who has the upper hand by the end of the night,” says Ibiki.

Sasuke is next, one of the few that Ibiki hopes will yield decent information, though not willingly. “I have no idea,” he says, almost as composed as Neji had been that morning. “I’ve been busy with my team for the last few weeks.”

“If you had to pick one of your fellow Uchiha,” says Ibiki, “who would you say is most likely to try something like this?”

“No one,” says Sasuke, too quickly for it not to be a lie.

“Because they’ve seen the error of their ways and love the village too much?”

“Because they value their lives,” says Sasuke, proving that he does have some skill for political posturing.

“Some of your cousins think it might be your brother.”

That makes Sasuke pause. “What did this alleged Uchiha do, exactly?”

“Taunts, mostly.”

“Then it wasn’t Itachi,” says Sasuke with cold certainty. “He never taunts. He eliminates.”

After Sasuke leaves, Yuu sighs and says, “Kid’s not wrong.”

“Itachi’s not a suspect,” says Ibiki. If Itachi ever turns on them, there will be no nonsensical attacks at Kakashi, or Hyuga genin.

“He’s more likely than Madara,” says Yuu.

The last and most important subject is Mikoto, de-facto head of the Uchiha clan, no matter how hard she tries to play the placid housewife. Fugaku has retreated to the world of opiates, and for all Ibiki knows, that suits his wife just fine. She sits across from him with a soft smile, managing to look classically beautiful even though she makes no effort to hide her stump.

“Do you know who it is?” Ibiki knows that the best way to deal with someone buried in subterfuge is to treat them as though they are honest.

“I have my theories,” says Mikoto, “but theories is all they are.”

“Care to share?”

“I wouldn’t want to look foolish.”

“At this point?” Ibiki allows himself a small smile. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”

Mikoto’s smile doesn’t falter. “A fair conclusion, all things considered. But since you’re not here to torture us, I would appreciate it if you got your business done.”

“It’s almost time for my dinner anyway,” says Ibiki. “I will speak to your clan as a whole now.”

The Uchiha are still gathered on Fugaku’s patio, talking amongst themselves like the whole thing is a birthday party. They’ve always been good actors.

“Everyone, I have one last announcement,” says Ibiki. They’re all smart enough that he doesn’t have to speak a second time. “We are not foolish enough to believe that any of you would come forward out of duty, kindness, or even stupidity. We also do not have enough information that torturing any of you would be a viable option.”

That earns a few smirks, but Ibiki was expecting them.

“We also know that, despite it all, the Uchiha are not so different than any random person off the street,” continues Ibiki, suppressing a smirk of his own at the affronted looks that little insult earns him. “At least one of you, probably more, would jump at the chance to join our ranks again. If any of you volunteer the information we need, then Hokage-sama himself will order one of the surgeons to transplant you a new prosthesis, and you’ll be restored to your former rank.” 

And just like that, Ibiki could hear a veritable fucking pin drop. He turns to Mikoto and offers her a genuine smile. “Thank you, Lady Mikoto, for your time and cooperation.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [My blog](http://www.dynamicallyopposed.com/) is here.


End file.
